It has come to our attention that the Chelsea Hotel management plans to punch a hole through the ceiling of Star Lounge in the
basement and up through the floor of Stanley’s office (to the west of the
lobby), in an apparent attempt to extend the raucous club up into the lobby
area.
Our main
concern at this point is for the structural integrity of the building, and
especially for the fate of the
magnificent Beaux Art mural on the ceiling of
As part
of his ambitious ten-year renovation project for the hotel, Stanley Bard had
the mural restored in 2000. We have been
in contact with the restorer, Lisa Rosen of Fine Art Restoration, who
writes to describe the costly and laborious process:
"The painting was obfuscated with 129 years of New York City smog, soot, nicotine
and surface dirt. The once transparent final layer of protective varnish
had also altered, turning first yellow and then brown (see photo ). The restorative cleaning procedure took five weeks of intensive
physical labor using 'q-tip's' and idoneous solvent to finally arrive at
what
you see today. What you see now is how the painted canvas looked
originally leaving the master's studio before being adhered to the hotel
ceiling.
In the 1880's the height of chic was to hire Italian artists to come to
The
As you can see by the before
and after pictures, Rosen has
done a great job.
It would be a shame if this irreparable mural were lost due to careless
and/or malicious action on the part of hotel management, who might have other
ideas about what a chi-chi
club should look like.
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